QurʾānArabicRecitationArabic “Recitation”also spelled Koran holy book Quran and Koran the sacred scripture of Islam , regarded by believers as the true and, for all Muslims, the very word of Godas revealed , revealed through the agency of the archangel Gabriel to the Prophet Muḥammad. In its written form it is accepted as the earthly reproduction of an uncreated and eternal heavenly original, according to the general view referred to in the Qurʾān itself as “the well-preserved tablet” (al-lawḥ al-maḥfūẓ; Qurʾān 85:22). The word qurʾān is derived from the verb qaraʾa “to read,” “to recite,” but there is probably also some connection with Syriac qeryānā, “reading,” used for the scriptural lessons in the Syrian Church. In the Qurʾān itself the word is not used with reference to the book as a whole but only as a term for separate revelations or for the divine revelation in general. The Qurʾān is held in high esteem as the ultimate authority in all matters legal and religious and is generally regarded as infallible in all respects. Its Arabic language is thought to be unsurpassed in purity and beauty and to represent the highest ideal of style. To imitate the style of the Qurʾān is a sacrilege.

Form

In length the Qurʾān is approximately comparable with the New Testament. For purposes of recitation during the holy month of Ramaḍān it is divided into 30 “portions” (juzʾ, plural ajzāʾ), one for each day of the month. Its main division, however, is into 114 chapters, called sūrahs, of very unequal length. With the exception of the first sūrah, the so-called fātiḥah (“opening” of the book), which is a short prayer, the sūrahs are arranged roughly according to length, sūrah 2 being the longest and the last two or three the shortest. Because the longest sūrahs generally derive from the latter part of Muḥammad’s activity, the consequence of this arrangement is that the oldest sūrahs are generally to be found toward the end of the book and the youngest generally appear at its beginning.

In the accepted version of the Qurʾān now in use, each sūrah has a heading containing the following elements: (1) a title, which is usually derived from some conspicuous word in the sūrah, such as “The Cow,” “The Bee,” “The Poets,” but is usually not an indication of the contents of the whole chapter; (2) the basmalah; i.e., the formula-prayer “In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate”; (3) an indication of whether the sūrah was revealed at Mecca or at Medina and of the number of its verses; and finally (4) in some cases one or more fawātiḥ, or detached letters (e.g., tāʾ sīn, tāʾ sīn mīm), or alif lām mīm, the meaning of which has not been satisfactorily explained, though it is thought that they might stand for abbreviated words, indicate certain collections of sūrahs, or have an esoteric significance.

The verses in the Qurʾān are called āyah (plural āyāt, literally “signs”) and vary considerably in length. The shortest verses generally occur in the earliest sūrahs, in which the style of Muḥammad’s revelation comes very close to the rhymed prose (sajʿ) used by the kāhins, or soothsayers, of his time. As the verses get progressively longer and more circumstantial, the rhymes come farther and farther apart. There is also a change of linguistic style: the earlier sūrahs are characterized by short sentences, vivid expressions, and poetic force; and the later ones become more and more detailed, complicated and, at times, rather prosaic in outlook and language. As a result, it is sometimes difficult to decide whether or not a rhyme is intended to indicate the end of a verse; and consequently, there are variations in the numbering of verses (e.g., between the European editions long used by Western scholars and the official Egyptian edition that has now replaced them in most scholarly works).

The Qurʾān generally appears as the speech of God, who mostly speaks in the first person plural (“we”). When the prophet Muḥammad is speaking to his compatriots, his words are introduced by the command, “Say,” thus emphasizing that he is speaking on divine injunction only. At times the form is also dramatic, bringing in objections by Muḥammad’s opponents and answering them by counter-arguments. Narrative passages are mostly brief. Stories of prophets and biblical persons are often alluded to as though they are known to the audience. The stress is not on the narrative but on its didactic uses.

On closer analysis very few of the sūrahs turn out to be uniform in style or content. The longest text dealing with one subject is sūrah 12, which tells the story of Joseph, differing from the biblical account in a great many details, most of which seem to outside historians to have been drawn from Jewish sources. Otherwise the longer sūrahs are composed of several brief sections dealing with a variety of topics. Thus the Qurʾān does not give the appearance of a planned, organized, or systematic treatise, an impression that is further heightened by the fact that certain favourite phrases such as “but God is forgiving, compassionate,” “God is knowing, wise,” “most of them know nothing” often have little or no apparent connection with the immediate context. In fact, some skeptics claim that these additions served only to produce a needed rhyme.

It is often emphasized that Muḥammad brought to his people “an Arabic Qurʾān”; i.e., a book or set of recitations in the Arabs’ own language comparable to those of Judaism and Christianity. Also the vocabulary of the Qurʾān is overwhelmingly of Arabic origin, but there are, nevertheless, borrowed words, mostly from Hebrew and Syriac, bearing witness to Muḥammad’s debt to Judaism and Christianity. These loan words are primarily technical terms such as injīl, “gospel” (Greek evangelion); taurāt, “the law, or Torah” of Judaism; Iblīs, “the Devil” (Greek diabolos); or translations or adaptations of theological terms such as āmana, “to believe” (Hebrew or Aramaic); ṣalāt, “prayer” (probably Syriac). Such explanations are usually regarded with suspicion by Muslims, since orthodox doctrine holds that the language of the Qurʾān is the purest Arabic.

Origins and compilation of the Qurʾān

Muslim tradition

According to Muslim tradition the Qurʾān was revealed to Muḥammad in separate pieces over some 20 years. On such occasions, Muḥammad, it is said, was in a kind of trance or ecstasy, during which the revelations were brought to him by the angel Gabriel. On his return to normal consciousness he recited the words of revelation to those present. There are many traditions about the occasions on which a certain sūrah or part of a sūrah was revealed. Thus the revelation of the Qurʾān is connected with events in the life of the Prophet. Even the traditional recension (version) of the Qurʾān itself classifies the sūrahs as Meccan or Medinan.

Obviously, many people learned the words of the revelation by heart, but there are also traditions that, at the time of their revelation, Muḥammad had them written down on “pieces of paper, stones, palm-leaves, shoulder-blades, ribs, and bits of leather,” i.e., whatever writing material there was at hand. It is believed that the Prophet indicated to the scribes the context in which a certain passage should be placed.

After the Prophet’s death, and especially after the battle of Yamāmah (633), in which a great number of those who knew the Qurʾān by heart had fallen, fear arose that the knowledge of the Qurʾān might disappear. So it was decided to collect the revelations from all available written sources and, as Muslim tradition has it, “from the hearts [i.e., memories] of people.” A companion of the Prophet, Zayd ibn Thābit, is said to have copied on sheets whatever he could find and to have handed it over to the caliph ʿUmar. After ʿUmar’s death the collection was left in the care of his daughter Ḥafṣah. Other copies of the Qurʾān appear to have been written later, and different versions were used in different parts of the Muslim empire. So that there would be no doubt about the correct reading of the Qurʾān, the caliph ʿUthmān (644–656) is reported to have commissioned Zayd ibn Thābit and some other learned men to revise the Qurʾān using the “sheets” of Ḥafṣah, comparing them with whatever material was at hand, and consulting those who knew the Qurʾān by heart. It was decided that in case of doubt about the pronunciation, the dialect of Quraysh, the Prophet’s tribe, was to be given preference. Thus an authoritative text of the Qurʾān (now known as the ʿUthmānic recension) was established.

These traditions may have been reworked and changed to some extent to suit certain dogmatic theories concerning the Qurʾān, but in the main they reflect historical truth. It is obvious that the description of the method of revelation has been somewhat simplified. The Qurʾān itself states (42:50–52) that God spoke to Muḥammad “by suggestion, or from behind a veil, or by sending a messenger to suggest what he pleases.” The first term (Arabic waḥy) denotes a “suggestion” or “inspiration” of the kind that is well known by many poets; the Qurʾān also uses a term meaning “it was sent down.” The second term seems to suggest some kind of imaginative locution without any accompanying vision. Only the third expression alludes to an angel but without mentioning the name of Gabriel.

Views of those outside Islam

The chronology of the sūrahs is a much debated problem. The existing traditions concerning the occasions for the revelation of certain passages cannot always be controlled and may or may not be reliable. European scholars have applied the criteria of style and contents to establish the relative order of the sūrahs or parts of sūrahs. From the time when Theodor Nöldeke published his History of the Qurʾān (1860), it has been common to arrange the sūrahs in four groups, deriving from three subsequent periods at Mecca and from Medina. The above exposition of the content of the Qurʾān roughly follows this arrangement.

In the Muslim view, Muḥammad received every word of the Qurʾān directly from God. The Qurʾān describes, and indignantly rejects, accusations that the Prophet had reproduced things that he had drawn from other sources. Western scholars who have analyzed the contents of the various revelations have shown that much of the narrative material concerning biblical persons and events differs from the biblical account and seems to have come from later Christian and, above all, from Jewish sources (e.g., Midrash). Other motifs, such as the idea of the impending judgment and the descriptions of paradise agree with standard topics in the missionary preaching of the contemporary Syriac church fathers. The dependence need not, however, be of a literary kind, but might be due to influence from oral traditions.

It would appear that learning the words of the revelation by heart was the normal way of preserving them, and that only on special occasions were the words written down immediately. The existence of various early collections of Qurʾānic material seems to be a warranted fact, although their nature and contents cannot be determined. Some of the sūrahs beginning with separate letters (al-fawātiḥ)—certain consonant combinations detached from the main text (mentioned above under the heading Form)—occur together in the present Qurʾān and in the order of decreasing length in such a way as to suggest that they once formed separate collections. The establishment of a vulgate recension (a standard version) was not sufficient to secure the uniform and correct reading of the Qurʾān in all details. The Arabic script was incomplete; several consonants were easy to confuse, and there was no way of indicating the vowels to differentiate the variety of possible meanings inherent in a particular combination of consonants. To assure the correct recitation, therefore, it was necessary to know the text more or less by heart. In this way, differing variant readings arose, warranted by this or that “reader” of the Qurʾān.

The recorded variations, however, turned out to be remarkably few, and though no complete listing of the textual variants exists, it can safely be said that the textual tradition of the Qurʾān is much firmer and more uniform than that of the New Testament. The Arabic script was gradually improved. Diacritical signs were introduced to distinguish the letters that were similar in form, and long vowels were indicated by the letters alif (for ā), wāw (for ū), and yā (for ī). It is known that this vowel system was still disputed at the beginning of the 9th century. The special vowel signs placed above or beneath the letters were added in a different colour and did not count as part of the text itself.

Interpretations

The “readers” (qurrāʾ, singular qāriʾ) were the specialists of the text of the Qurʾān. They were at the same time philologians, and it was to a great extent from their dealings with the language of the Qurʾān that the science of Arabic grammar grew. Two schools developed, one at Baṣra (in present-day Iraq), which was especially interested in systematizing and ordering the material to set up the rules governing the language, and a rival one at Kūfa (also in Iraq), which took more interest in the exceptional. It was theorized that several variant readings could be accepted only if they were based on the ʿUthmānic recension (version). It was also important that a reading be based on the authority of some renowned reader.

There was also theological speculation as to the true nature of the Qurʾān. In the discussions initiated by the Muʿtazilites (Seceders; literally, “those who stand apart”; a group that sought to introduce philosophical principles from Greek rationalism into Islamic thought) the question of the eternity of the Qurʾān (i.e., of its heavenly prototype) was one of the main points. The Muʿtazilites, who wanted to avoid everything that might compromise or encroach upon the oneness of God, denied the doctrine that the Qurʾan was uncreated and eternal, because this would mean that something else besides the God of eternity would exist eternally and thus create an eternal and irreconcilable “dualism.” Consequently they asserted that the Qurʾān was created by God. This doctrine, however, was rejected by orthodox adherents of Islam. In popular belief, the reverence for the Qurʾān is often directed toward the visible, physical book or parts of it. Oaths are taken on it, and passages are sometimes copied out of it to be used for magical or superstitious purposes.

In these and other doctrinal disputes the parties sought support for their opinions in the sayings of the Qurʾān, since it was considered as the ultimate authority in all legal and religious questions. The correct interpretation of the Qurʾān became the object of a special branch of learning, the so-called tafsīr, or Qurʾānic exegesis. All kinds of resources were utilized in order to elucidate the meaning of a Qurʾānic passage. Traditions concerning the circumstances surrounding the revelation of certain passages or containing interpretative utterances of the Prophet that had been transmitted orally were recorded and collected, together with other traditions deriving from and concerning the Prophet (Ḥadīth). At times, in order to provide authority for a certain theory, traditions were simply invented. Any interpretation of a Qurʾānic passage that could not be supported by Ḥadīth was originally rejected. The results of the study of grammar and lexicography were also utilized; examples from contemporary poetry were often quoted in order to elucidate the grammatical structure or the lexical meaning of a passage. Thus, work on the Qurʾān, whose ultimate goal was the correct understanding and application of its teachings, went hand in hand with the development of Arabic grammar and lexicography.

Two works are especially renowned in the field of tafsīr, namely the commentary of al-Ṭabarī (839–923), a huge encyclopaedic collection that sums up everything that had been done so far in the field, and the Kashshāf of Zamakhsharī (1075–1143), which has gained almost canonical reputation, though its author was a Muʿtazilite and began his work with the words, “Praise be to God who created the Qurʾān.” A handy commentary of Bayḍāwī (d. c. 1280), which is often quoted as authoritative, is merely an abridged revision of the latter work.

The theological schools of medieval Islam all sought to support their doctrines with the aid of Qurʾānic exegesis, and each of them produced their own commentaries. There are also examples of allegorical interpretation (taʾwīl) especially in Ṣūfī (Islamic mystical) literature, in which the doctrines of mysticism are found to be hidden behind the literal sense of the Qurʾānic word.

Qurʾānic exegesis gained new significance with the appearance of modernism toward the end of the 19th century. The modernists, who sought to revive Islam from its degradation and to reconcile it with what they found valuable in Western scientific traditions, set up the principle of returning to the pure and uncorrupted Islam of the “ancestors.” As a consequence, the interpretation of the oldest and original source of Islam was regarded as imperative, and attempts were made to establish the principles necessary for a correct understanding of the Qurʾān. Traditional exegesis was accused of having introduced Israelite legends and false traditions that had nothing to do with the original teachings of the Prophet. On the other hand, the authority of the Qurʾān was never called in question.

Muḥammad ʿAbduh, the founder of modernism in Egypt, for several years published exegetical lectures in the journal al-Manār; and they were later published in book form by his Syrian disciple Rashīd Riḍā. In them he accepts the Qurʾān as the literally inspired word of God, in which there can be nothing false or antiquated, and tries to show that the results of modern science and many modern views are already present in the Qurʾān. This is often achieved by twisted interpretations, reading modern ideas into the words of the Qurʾān. For instance, the jinn (genii) of sūrah 2:176 that cause disease are interpreted as “microbes,” and the words in 2:250, “How often a little company has overcome a numerous company; and God is with those who endure,” is taken to refer to ideas reminiscent of Darwin’s theory of the struggle for life and the survival of the fittest. Allegorical interpretation is also used when it can serve the purpose of the author. Other modernistic interpreters of the Qurʾān have continued along the same lines. The Qurʾān is, however, left untouched by criticism; as the infallible word of God it cannot have been influenced by the circumstances under which it was revealed, it can contain no mistake, and it cannot be superseded by any new discovery.

Later developments, however, have brought some new ideas to the fore. In an Urdu commentary on the Qurʾān, which has in part been made available in English, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad (1888–1958), an Indian Muslim scholar (minister of education of the Republic of India at the time of his death), developed some new principles for the interpretation of the Qurʾān. He argues that it is necessary to interpret the Qurʾān against the background of its environment; therefore it is necessary to study the cultures and the languages of ancient Arabia and other Semitic peoples. Study of the historical circumstances in which the Qurʾān came into being is said to facilitate the understanding of what it meant to those who received the revelation.

Scholars have no doubt, however, that there are new developments in the field of Qurʾānic exegesis. Daud Rahbar, in his study The God of Justice (1960), argues that in order to elucidate a passage in the Qurʾān one should quote traditional exegesis and medieval dogmatics and, above all, use other Qurʾānic passages for comparison, letting one passage throw light on another. Though such ideas are looked upon with suspicion by orthodox Muslims and are fervently rejected by most Muslim leaders, they may indicate the inception of a more historical view of the Qurʾān, one that tries to distinguish between central religious ideas and those outward things that are dependent on the historical environment.

Translations

The Qurʾān was revealed to Muḥammad as “an Arabic book” or an Arabic reading (qurʾān), to provide the Arabs with a holy book in their own language, comparable with the scriptures of Judaism and Christianity. As has been noted, the language of the Qurʾān is regarded as surpassing everything that can be written in Arabic. The Qurʾān itself is a miracle and cannot be imitated by man.

As a consequence of this, it is regarded as unfitting to translate the Qurʾān. In countries in which other languages are spoken, the Qurʾān is still recited in Arabic. There exist Muslim translations of the Qurʾān; e.g., into Turkish, Urdu, and English (the latter during the Aḥmadiyah movement founded in 1889 by Mirza Ghulam Aḥmad in the Punjab region of India), but on principle these are regarded as paraphrases, not as translations that can be used for ritual purposes.

The Qurʾān was first printed in Arabic at Rome by Pagninus Brixiensis (1530), but the edition was never circulated. Abraham Hinckelmann published an Arabic text at Hamburg in 1694. Since then several European editions have appeared; one of the best was that of Gustav Flügel (1834), the first critical edition, often reprinted. It is from this edition that Western scholars have usually quoted the Qurʾān. Several editions are today printed in Muslim countries, and an official Egyptian edition is gaining more and more ground among Western scholars.

The first Latin translation was made in 1143 at the request of an abbot of the monastery of Cluny and was published at Basle in 1543 by Theodor Bibliander and afterward rendered into Italian, German, and Dutch. The first French translation was by André du Ryer (1647); it was translated into English by Alexander Ross (1649–88). George Sale’s English translation first appeared in 1734 and has passed through many new editions. It has become something of a classic and can still be useful in many respects. A translation by J.M. Rodwell, with the sūrahs arranged in chronological order, appeared in 1861. Edward Henry Palmer’s translation was published in Sacred Books of the East in 1880. Bell’s translation “with a critical rearrangement of the sūrahs” (1937–39) tries to analyze the sūrahs into their smallest units and show how these were joined together to form the present Qurʾān.

The Qurʾān has also been translated into most other European languages. Special mention should be made of Régis Blachère’s French translation (1949–50) because of its rather detailed notes, and of Rudi Paret’s German rendering (1962), which is very accurate and makes extensive use of parallel passages within the Qurʾān itself, but is rather dry in its styleMuhammad. Although most modern Muslims know it as the Holy Qurʾān, many of them still refer to it as al-Qurʾān al-karīm or al-Qurʾān al-majīd, which can best be translated as “the Noble Qurʾān” or “the Glorious Qurʾān.” The Qurʾān, which is the central theophany (divine manifestation) of Islam, is written in Arabic, which is Islam’s sacred and liturgical language. Because of Arabic’s sacred status, the Qurʾān is, strictly speaking, untranslatable, though the text has been rendered into nearly every other language.

Names and structure

The name Qurʾān is derived from the term al-qurʾān, meaning “the recitation.” The scripture has many other names, each of which suggests an aspect of its significance for Muslims. Among those found in the text itself are al-furqān (“discernment”),umm al-kitāb (the “mother book,” or “archetypal book”), al-hudā (“the guide”), dhīkrallāh (“the remembrance of God”), al-ḥikmah (“wisdom”), and kalāmallāh (“the word of God”). Another term found in the Qurʾān is al-kitāb (“the book”), though it is also used in both the Qurʾān and the Arabic language for other scriptures, such as the Torah and the Gospels. The term musḥāf (“written work”) is usually used to refer to particular manuscripts of the Qurʾān but is also used in the Qurʾān to identify earlier revealed books. The term al-Qurʾān is given as the main name of the text in the work itself and is explicitly identified as an Arabic word. Some Western scholars believe that the term originated in the Syriac language and entered Arabic before the rise of Islam. In any case, it had become an Arabic term by Muhammad’s lifetime.

The Qurʾān has long been considered the supreme standard of eloquence in the Arabic language. Qurʾānic Arabic has been studied by non-Arab Muslims all over the world, because the daily prayer recited by all Muslims consists primarily of Qurʾānic verses in Arabic. Muslims believe that the Arabic language of the Qurʾān is indispensable in conveying God’s message because it was chosen by God himself. In the same way that everything concerning Christ is sacred for Christians, everything concerning the Qurʾān is sacred for Muslims. In keeping with the verse, “None toucheth [the Qurʾān] save the purified” (sura 56, verse 79), most Muslims perform ritual ablutions before touching the Qurʾān, which is always found in a place of honour in the home or the mosque.

The text of the Qurʾān seems outwardly to have no beginning, middle, or end; its nonlinear structure is like that of a web or a net. It consists of 114 chapters called suras, a term mentioned several times and identified as units or chapters of the revelation. The title of each sura is derived from a name or quality discussed in the text or from the first letters or words of the sura. Muslims believe that the Prophet himself, on God’s command, gave the suras their names. The opening chapter, Al-Fātiḥah (The Opening), is the heart of the Qurʾān and is repeated in daily prayers and on many other occasions. The second sura, Al-Baqarah (The Cow), is the longest, and subsequent chapters are arranged according to length, with chapters becoming shorter as the text proceeds. All suras except one, Al-Tawba (Repentance), begin with the formula BismiʾLlāh al-Raḥmān al-Raḥīm (“In the Name of God, the Infinitely Good, the All Merciful”), which is the formula pious Muslims use whenever they consecrate something. The suras are further subdivided between those that were revealed to Muhammad in Mecca and those that were revealed to him in Medina. According to traditional Islamic authorities, the ordering of the chapters also was revealed to the Prophet and is not an ad hoc arrangement made by later scribes, as is claimed by many Western scholars, who do not accept the revealed nature of the Qurʾān.

Each sura is divided into verses called āyahs, from a term originally meaning a sign or portent sent by God to reveal an aspect of his wisdom. The number of āyahs in each sura ranges from three or four to more than 200, and an individual āyah may be as brief as one or two words or as long as several lines. The verses of the Qurʾān, however, should not be understood as poetry in the ordinary sense. Although the Qurʾān is extremely poetical, its āyahs are unlike the highly refined poetry of the pre-Islamic Arabs in their content and distinctive rhymes and rhythms, being more akin to the prophetic utterances marked by inspired discontinuities found in the sacred scriptures of Judaism and Christianity.

Since the beginning of Islam, the proper number of āyahs has been a topic of dispute among Muslim scholars, some recognizing 6,000, some 6,204, some 6,219, and some 6,236, although the words in all cases are the same. Indeed, the study of the enumeration of the verses of the Qurʾān developed very early in Islamic history at the schools of Mecca, Kufa, Basra, and Sham (see below Commentaries and Qurʾānic sciences). The most popular edition of the Qurʾān, which is based on the tradition of the school of Kufa, contains 6,236 āyahs.

Complementing the organization into suras and āyahs, there is a crosscutting division into 30 parts, juzʾs, each containing two units called ḥizbs, each of which in turn is divided into four parts (rub ʿal-aḥzābs). These divisions facilitate the reading of the Qurʾān over periods of different lengths. For example, since Muslims believe that the Qurʾān was first revealed during the holy month of Ramadan, a time of prayer and fasting, many people recite one juzʾ each day and therefore complete the reading of the Qurʾān during the month. The Qurʾān is also divided into seven stations, or manāzils, for those who wish to recite the whole text during one week.

Revelation

There is a vast difference between the Islamic understanding of the revelation of the Qurʾān and modern historical accounts of the composition of the text by mostly Western scholars, who reject the idea that it was divinely revealed. This has been the view of Western interpreters since the 12th century, when the Qurʾān was first translated into Latin by Robert of Ketton under the aegis of Peter the Venerable so that Christians would be better able to refute Islam. Although there have been some notable exceptions, the majority of Western scholars have tended to consider the Qurʾān to be the work of Muhammad himself. Although Western scholars of the Qurʾān, with certain exceptions, have not accepted the revealed nature of the sacred text, they have also differed greatly among themselves. Since the 19th century, when Orientalism in its modern form began in the West, there have been many Western theories about the origin and structure of the Qurʾān. Drawing from a variety of intellectual developments—the rationalism of the Enlightenment, the historicism of the 19th century, contemporary European philosophy, and the findings of Semitic philology—some scholars have considered the Qurʾān to have been based on what the Prophet Muhammad heard from the Jews and Christians around him. Other scholars have pointed out the similarity of some Qurʾānic terms with words existing in Aramaic, Syriac, and other Semitic languages and have identified older models from which the text of the Qurʾān was drawn. In the late 20th century some revisionist Western scholars even sought to refute completely the historical context of the appearance of the Qurʾān and claimed that the Qurʾān was assembled in its present form much later than the 7th century.

Traditional Muslims believe that the Qurʾān exists eternally with God in the Guarded Tablet (al-lawḥ al-maḥfāẓ)—a tablet in the spiritual world on which the text of the Qurʾān was inscribed before its descent into this world—as God’s word and that through the divine will the book was revealed to the Prophet word for word and sentence by sentence through the agency of the archangel Gabriel. Muhammad received his first revelation in the cave of Ḥīrā near Mecca in 610 and continued receiving revelations until 629. Muslims believe that Muhammad was unlettered (al-ummī) and that he did not alter the revelations by a single word. Despite Muhammad’s passive role, Muslims believe that something of his soul is present in the Qurʾān; Muhammad may have believed this himself, since he said that Muslims should remember him after his death by reciting the Qurʾān.

The Qurʾānic revelation was also a sonoral; that is, it was heard as a sound and not seen as a written text. Muhammad first heard the Qurʾān before uttering it and writing it down. Even today, while the Qurʾān is primarily understood as a book, the great majority of Muslims experience it through recitation. Most Muslims are not Arabs and do not know Arabic, and among Arabs a large number are not literate; nevertheless, throughout the Islamic world the Qurʾān is present on nearly every occasion through its being chanted according to traditional norms dating to the origin of the religion, its chanting constituting one of the sacred Islamic arts. A Muslim who knows the Qurʾān by heart, of whom there are many, is called a ḥāfiẓ, which means “one who has memorized the sacred text.”

Compilation

In the 19th century the Danish scholar Theodor Nöldeke, in his influential Geschichte des Qorans (1860; “History of the Qurʾān”), largely rejected the Islamic understanding of the process whereby the text of the Qurʾān was compiled. Since then others, such as I. Goldziher, Richard Bell, and Jeffrey and W.M. Watt, have challenged the traditional Islamic perspective, while more recently John Wansbrough and John Burton have completely rejected pious traditions concerning the compilation of the Qurʾān. Although Burton believed that Muhammad himself sanctioned a complete text of the Qurʾān before his death, Wansbrough argued that there was no definitive text until the 9th century. The various Western views have all been addressed by contemporary Muslim scholars, who have based their responses on the earliest historical sources and archaeological evidence as well as on oral tradition, but these views still dominate much of the academic study of the Qurʾān in the West.

According to the Sunni understanding, during the lifetime of the Prophet many people memorized the Qurʾān, and parts were also written down on whatever was at hand, including the bodies of believers, the shoulder bones of camels, tablets, and palm fronds, some of which have survived to this day. During the caliphate of Abū Bakr (632–634), Zayd ibn Thābit, who had recorded some of the Qurʾān during Muhammad’s lifetime, was asked to compile a written version of the whole text. The completed text was passed to ʿUmar, Abū Bakr’s successor, and later kept by ʿUmar’s daughter Ḥafṣah. During ʿUthmān’s reign as caliph, a quarrel broke out among soldiers from different areas concerning the reading of certain verses. ʿUthmān chose Zayd ibn Thābit to prepare a definitive version, which he did with the help of three natives of Mecca. A copy was kept in Medina, and others were sent to Damascus, Kufa, Yemen, and possibly Basra. Copies containing alternate readings were destroyed, and ʿUthmān’s edition became the standard text of the Qurʾān and has remained so ever since.

The Shīʿite view, as well as that of some Sunnis, holds that ʿAlī, one of the first converts to Islam and the fourth caliph, retired from public life after the death of the Prophet and compiled a complete version of the Qurʾān, which was later shown to the people of Medina. Although a few Shīʿite scholars discount the role of Zayd ibn Thābit in the Qurʾān’s preparation, the vast majority reject this view. Apart from minor differences over the numbering of verses and the interpretation of certain words and phrases, orthodox Sunni and Shīʿite scholars generally agree on the canonical text of the Qurʾān.

Although a standard text thus emerged very early in Islamic history, there were variations among different versions in orthography, vocalization, and pronunciation. There were also different interpretations of some verses, which naturally affected their theological significance. In the 10th century the theologian Ibn Mujāhid refined the orthography, which resulted in greater uniformity in the text. He reduced the numerous interpretations of certain verses or sequences of words of the Qurʾān to seven possibilities, and gradually the interpretation of ʿĀṣim (died 744), as transmitted by Ḥafṣ (died 805), came to be preferred. The meaning of a word can change through altering the punctuation. In the Qurʾān some verses also acquire another meaning if the sentence ends with a certain word and not another. There developed, in fact, a whole Qurʾānic science concerning this issue.

Levels of meaning

The Qurʾān, as attested by many of the sayings of Muhammad (Hadith), has many levels of meaning. The existence of outward and inward levels of meaning is indicated in the text itself, which speaks of God as being both the Outward (al-Ẓāhir) and the Inward (al-Bāṭin). As the word of God, therefore, the Qurʾān also possesses a ẓāhir and several levels of bāṭin. Commentaries dealing with the ẓāhir of the text are called tafsīr (“commentary”), and hermeneutic and esoteric commentaries dealing with the bāṭin are called taʾwīl (“interpretation” or “explanation”), which involves taking the text back to its beginning. Esoteric commentators believe that the ultimate meaning of the Qurʾān is known only to God.

Certain verses of the Qurʾān, as well as the “mysterious letters” that appear at the beginning of certain suras—e.g., the letters alif (a), lām (l), and mīm (m), which are found at the beginning of The Cow—can be understood only esoterically, it is held, and their meanings are connected with the numerical values associated with the relevant letters of the Arabic alphabet. The Islamic science of the numerical values of letters, called jafr, corresponds to the Kabbalistic and Hassidic study of the Hebrew letters of the Torah in Judaism (see Kabbala). The study of jafr is thought to reveal a mathematical structure that underlies the whole text. For example, certain phrases are repeated in a mathematical pattern.

The verses of the Qurʾān are also divided into the explicit (muḥkamāt) and the implicit, or ambiguous (mutashābihāt). The latter category includes verses whose meanings are known only to God and to those who are “firm in knowledge” (al-rāsikhūn fīʾl-ʿilm). According to Sunni and Sufi commentators, knowledge of these meanings is received from the Prophet and his spiritual descendants; Shīʿite commentators hold that it is inherited from the Prophet, the Imams, and certain sages.

Content

As the sacred scripture of a world religion, the Qurʾān contains all the guidance necessary for Muslims, and there is practically no aspect of life with which it does not deal. Above all, the Qurʾān is concerned with the ultimate nature of reality, or God (Allah); Muslims believe that the Qurʾān’s exposition of this reality is the most complete possible. The Qurʾān emphasizes the oneness of God, or the doctrine of tawḥīd, in verses such as “Allah, there is no god but He” (2:255–3:2). God is both completely transcendent and completely imminent; his closeness to humans is asserted in the verse, “We are nearer to him than his jugular vein” (50:16). Although the supreme name of God is Allah, he has many other names, which humans are invited to use: “To God belong the Most Beautiful Names. Call Him by them” (7:180). Religion is considered to be inseparable from human existence, and indeed it is ingrained in humanity’s primordial nature (al-fiṭrah).

The Qurʾān asserts a direct relation between God and humans, without any priestly intermediary; each man and woman is seen as God’s “vicegerent” on earth. Despite this direct relationship, humans are portrayed as forgetful beings and are therefore commanded to obey God’s laws. Submission to God’s will is of primary importance—the name of the religion, al-islām, is derived from the root slm, meaning “surrender” or “peace.” Men and women are expected to be virtuous, to pray, and to perform their duties to family, to society, and indeed to creation as a whole.

The Qurʾān contains specific laws and legal principles for governing Islamic society, such as laws of inheritance; Islamic law in its systematized form is known as Sharīʿah. Rights are treated as secondary to the individual’s obligations to God and to creation. Throughout the Qurʾān a balance is created between the rights and obligations of the individual and the community, in light of God’s laws and commandments, as well as between man’s duties toward God and his duties toward society and the world of nature. For example, human beings are given freedom by God, and they are obligated to pray to God. They have the right to own property but not what is of a public nature. Society must in turn protect the property of its members. Human beings also can make use of various creatures in nature but must also protect animals and plants and not squander natural resources.

The Qurʾān also deals extensively with the cosmos and the world of nature. No sacred scripture, with the possible exception of the Chinese Daodejing, speaks as often about nature as the Qurʾān does. The phenomena of nature are called āyāts, or signs of God, which are similar to the vestigia Dei of Christian thought. Islamic thinkers from the 9th and 10th centuries onward referred to the cosmos itself as the “cosmic Qurʾān” (al-Qurʾān al-takwīnī), which complements the written Qurʾān (al-Qurʾān al-tadwīnī).

One of the major themes of the Qurʾān is the meaning of ethical action and the battle between good and evil. All human actions have consequences for the soul beyond its earthly life, and therefore discussion of good and evil is inseparable from the consideration of eschatology. In fact, questions pertaining to eschatological realities, including the most vivid descriptions of the paradisal and infernal states, constitute a very crucial part of the Qurʾānic message. Some of the earliest suras revealed to Muhammad (which actually appear at the end of the Qurʾān) are concerned especially with the Last Day and other eschatological matters. The early suras, it should be noted, come at the end of the Qurʾān; the suras, after the first, are arranged according to length and not chronology.

The Qurʾān asserts that belief in the unit of God is at the heart of all authentic religions, and it uses the singular rather than the plural when referring to religion. At the same time, it states explicitly that there are no people to whom God has not sent a messenger, and it mentions some of the prophets of Judaism and Christianity by name. The Qurʾān presents a universal perspective on religion, maintaining that all revealed books are contained in the umm al-kitāb (“archetypal book”). According to the Qurʾān, there is oneness of the truth, but there is also diversity in religions because of the diversity of humanity. The Qurʾānic doctrine of the universality and diversity of religions is perhaps best summarized in the following verse:

For each We have appointed a divine law and a traced-out way. Had Allah willed He could have made you one community. But that He may try you by that which He hath given you (He hath made you as ye are). So vie one with another in good works. Unto Allah you will return and He will then inform you of that wherein you differ. (5:48)

Muslims, therefore, are asked to accept the Torah, the Gospels, and other books; the Qurʾān asserts, “I believe in whatever Book God may have revealed” (42:15). Muslims also must respect the followers of other religions, such as Zoroastrianism, Judaism, and Christianity (which the Qurʾān considers to be the “People of the Book,” Ahl al-Kitāb) and must recognize that there are virtuous people in other religious communities. The idea of the “People of the Book” was applied later by Muslims in India to Hinduism and in some cases to Buddhism and in China to Confucianism. The Qurʾān invites followers of different religions to meet on the basis of the oneness of God (3:64). Although it rejects the divinity of Christ—whose miraculous birth and exalted position among prophets it nevertheless confirms explicitly—it asserts that, among all other religions, the one closest to Islam is Christianity.

Commentaries and Qurʾānic sciences

In the Islamic world, all intellectual disciplines—including not only theology and mysticism but also philosophy, jurisprudence, and even the natural sciences—have been concerned with the Qurʾān and have sought to establish their foundations in its teachings. Sunni, Shīʿite, and Sufi scholars have written commentaries that explore dimensions of the Qurʾān pertinent to these and other studies. Among the most notable commentaries is that of al-Zamakhsharī (1075–1144), on the rhetoric of the Qurʾān; that of al-Qurṭubī, which treats jurisprudence; and that of al-Ṭabarī (c. 839–923), which examines the early sacred history of Islam and the chain of early narrators. The Shīʿite tradition of commentaries began with the Imams and includes many major works, the most comprehensive of which is that of al-Ṭabarī, which brought together several different schools of tafsīr (see above Levels of meaning). The numerous Sufi commentaries include those of Jaʿfar al-Ṣādīq (699/700–765), Sulamī (937–1021), Rūzbihān Baqlī Shīrāzī (1128–1209), Ibn ʿArabī (1165–1240), Rashīd al-Din Maybudī (12th century), and ʿAbd al-Razzāq Kāshānī (d. c. 730). Among extant philosophical commentaries, the most significant is that of Mullā Ṣadrā in the 17th century. In addition, many major commentaries appeared in the 20th century, including those of Mawlānā Abuʾl-Kalām Āzād, Mawlānā Mawdūdī, Sayyid Quṭb, and ʿAllāmah Ṭabāṭabāʾī.

The ʿulūm al-Qurʾāniyyah (“Qurʾānic sciences”) encompass a host of disciplines devoted to the general interpretation and history of the text or to the elucidation of specific aspects. The topics studied range from proper pronunciation and reading and chanting to the enumeration of verses, the underlying mathematical structure of the text, the circumstances in which various verses were revealed, and the outer and inner meanings of certain passages.

Translations

Although Muslims considered it ultimately untranslatable, efforts were made as early as the last part of the 7th century to translate the Qurʾān into other languages. A 7th-century Persian translation was followed in the 9th century by a translation into Sindhi and somewhat earlier Gujarati, and the text later appeared in the languages of all the other regions where Islam was established as the majority religion. The first translation into a European language, as noted above, was the 12th-century Latin paraphrase of Robert of Ketton. The first English translation was made by A. Ross in the 17th century from the French; the first English translation directly from the original Arabic was made by William Bedwell in 1615. Today translations of the Qurʾān are found in nearly every language of the world, and numerous editions are available in English.

The significance of the Qurʾān

It is difficult to exaggerate the importance of the Qurʾān in the life of Muslims. Verses of the Qurʾān are recited to Muslims at birth, the psalmody of the text surrounds them at the time of death, and, at all points in between, their lives are imbued with its presence. Those who can read the text do so regularly, and others listen to it constantly. For each Muslim the Qurʾān is like a person with whom he or she becomes more intimate as he or she grows older.

The verses of the Qurʾān are thought to have power over body and soul, healing both. The sense of the protective power of the Qurʾān is so great that many Muslims carry small copies of it with them almost always. Many Islamic cities had—and a few still have—a copy of the Qurʾān at the top of their gates, so that travelers who enter will receive the blessing of its protection.

The Qurʾān is also the wellspring of the sacred Islamic arts and specifically the so-called Qurʾānic arts of psalmody, calligraphy, and illumination. Every part of the Islamic world, from Arabia and Persia to Senegal and Indonesia, has created beautiful manuscripts of the Qurʾān and developed penetrating styles for its recitation. Traditional Islamic mosque architecture is also closely related to the Qurʾān, in that it seeks to create proper spaces in which the sound of Qurʾānic recitation may reverberate.

Despite the diversity of the Islamic world, belief in the sacredness of the Qurʾān in all of its aspects—from the sound of its recitation to the paper upon which it is written—is universal. All Muslims recite the Qurʾān in a state of reverence, usually while facing their qiblah—that is, the direction of the Kaʿbah. The Qurʾān is the foundation of Islam as a world religion and the basis upon which Islamic civilization was created. It is also for Muslims the ultimate link between the individual and God, a net cast by God into the world in order to ensnare the wandering soul and bring it back to Allah, the One, who is the beginning and end of all things.